


sight

by calcetineys



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 6a AU, Alternate Universe, Gen, Kira Returns, Kira and Theo aren't friends but, Kira centric, Past Scott McCall/Kira Yukimura, edited tags, he's part of her story, references to s5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:40:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21906880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcetineys/pseuds/calcetineys
Summary: Kira sees now.
Kudos: 9





	sight

**Author's Note:**

> Folks... I just had a lot of feelings about Kira, and trying to reconcile her character and the fact that she, out of all of them, was the person to l i t e r a l l y send someone to hell.

Beacon Hills has been misplaced.

The town is where she left it, its buildings and roads and forests all appear unchanged when she returns for the third time. For maybe the last time. 

But still, something is different.

For a moment, Kira thinks that she could say that the only thing that’s changed is her, that she’s the factor that leaves her unsettled, that makes looking out onto the town feel different, but it’s the fact that she _is_ different now that tells her that this change is not because of her.  


No, Beacon Hills changed on its own. The first concrete sign of that is, ironically enough, the sign welcoming her back to town. She stares at the population count, a number she’d been all too familiar with, and all too familiar with it’s dwindling , because she’s only ever known it do so and yet-  


It’s lower now than it should be.  


Lower even than it was left after the Deadpool, after the Doctors and the Beast, and she would know, those numbers haunting her, haunting her with her inability to change them for the better, to keep them from decreasing further, until she could do nothing more than to take the one she accounted for and keep it with her as she left to learn.  


All this she knows, but the sign would not know, because it’s not due to be updated until the end of the decade.  


-  


She doesn’t need the other voice that shares her mind to whisper, _Do not second guess yourself._ She’s already telling that to herself as she walks down the highway. Do no second-guess this feeling saying that the town really _is_ emptier. She shouldn’t have been able to tell, had this not been some kind of ruse, some kind of deception. She knows more about that now, in this place where she suffered so many herself, knows more now, and here knowing more means knowing that if something seems wrong, then something _is_ wrong.  


She didn’t know before, didn’t look, didn’t see- never saw- not even when others put what she needed to see right in front of her; not even when everyone else could look and see what was wrong-  


Never knew until she was living in the lies, and not even always then.  


So she listens to herself and the spirit inside of her that agrees that she’s not imagining this feeling, that something is wrong, that there is a danger she can’t identify yet, that there is a reason her hair stands on end, that she glances over her shoulder for more than just passing cars.  


But she finds nothing.  


Not yet.  


-  


She doesn’t find her parents in their old home, but then, she wasn’t expecting to. They left when she left, and she should have gone to find them, and yet.  


And yet.  


-  


She remembers now, remembers the things her body witnessed while her mind took the backseat in her own head. Maybe ‘taking the backseat’ is too kind a term for the fox inside of her taking control, but forgiveness yielded way to balance and in the end, she wanted that more than she wished to be angry with the spirit.  


She had enough to work through aside from the spirit’s interference, and that, at least, always made itself known, even if after the fact.  


But she would not allow herself to be put in the backseat of her mind and her body now, and neither would the fox force her. But she listens to the whispers, to look further, to look closer in places she would not usually look. In the air itself, the fox says, when her efforts to find that _something_ that has changed lead her into the Preserve.  


Look in the air, she agrees, because looking at the ground got her nowhere. Look past what’s visible, to see what’s there. That’s all she wants now, to see what’s truly there.  


And she sees it now, sees magic not entirely unfamiliar to her, though she can’t place why, not yet, not as she follows the trails of what remains. She would say it was old, if it was not still burning, burning low with energy that unsettles her because it reminds her now of the magic she’d performed in this town before she left.  


That feeling tells her that she should keep on guard, even more so than she already is. And she isn’t surprised, that she’d come back and find things at their worst, that this is anything like what she did before she left, because it was the worst thing she’s ever done.  


-  


She follows the trails, would follow them all across the city, because she can sense that they stretch that far, but there seems to be no end and no beginning. What catches her attention, though, is not the lines of magic residue themselves, but what surrounds them. The world, when she glances around with unfocused eyes, looks fine, looks whole, looks… undamaged. But when she focuses, she can see where there are cuts in the fabric of reality, breaches that were patched together with different thread and edges that don’t quite align with their partners.  


It supports what she believes, because tearing through one reality into another is never seamless. And the thought comes to her, perhaps later than it should, that the people she left behind must know about this, must be doing something. The thought that maybe she should have gone to them instead of going out on her own.  


And she has to take a breath at that, at the solid proof of how much has changed. But she had tried to prepare herself for this change, knew it was coming. But she finds herself feeling more ready to handle the unexpected magic polluting the town than to meet her old friends. 

-  


She’s the only one feeling ready to handle this, because she’s the only one who _knows_ about it, knows that something is wrong, that there’s a danger they have to deal with- and she focuses on that, on how much they have to do, instead of meeting the eyes that are trying the hardest to meet hers.  


And when she asks about the one person who is still not there yet, but would be the first to voice his concern, all she’s met with is a question that makes her feel as though the ends of the room they stand in meet at edges that don’t match up, because they don’t:  


“What the hell is a Stiles?”  


-  


She understands then. The story her mother told her on that rainy car ride echoes in her head, bringing with it the question of if her mother _knew._ Because she always seemed to know the problems Beacon Hills would face, though she didn’t seem capable of helping with the problems her daughter would have to face.  


And she stands alone on the side of the highway, breath as unsteady as when she stood alone at the entrance to the desert, and she wonders if she has to do this alone too. If she has to do everything alone from now on, if her time spent learning how to stand on her own feet and in her own skin and her own mind means that all she can have is what she became. If the home she left took her example and left too, only decided not to come back. Gone, like they thought she’d be, like she herself thought she’d be. Forty years was her estimate, not four months. 

Four months spent letting go of memories and ideas of home and the person she was there and the people she knew and even the hope that one day she could come back. And she could say that it was trust, trust that if she belonged in this place and with these people that she could make a home there again.  


But in the quiet, when she looked at herself and couldn’t stop thinking of her failings, her weaknesses and her _blindness,_ she asked what value any of her past knowledge held, if it was worth holding onto, worth grieving for, when she didn’t know what of what she knew was real and what was not.  


-  


She stops thinking of the magic as just trails, because she can see where the Ghost Riders left punctures, holes in the universe where once there were people. Now there are patches, some smoother than others, some so crudely made that she wonders how it’s not visible to the naked eye.  


The one she finds with a Jeep in the school parking lot isn’t like that. Her fingers trace along the air, the seams left behind telling her that this was an easy capture, a quiet acceptance yielding into a divot in the world’s fabric where in other places there would be a bump.  


Her breath shakes as it leaves her, because she can’t imagine her friend being quiet or accepting of being taken from his home. She herself can’t think of being calm or accepting at the thought, wanting to reach out and tear at the sutures the Riders left behind to cover their tracks, wanting to reach through and pull him back and make some part of the home she wanted to make again make sense.  


How is it that she, who was gone and had to let go of this town and its people and _herself_ is the one to remember? Why did she have to lose and lose and be the only one to know what she lost, what they all lost?  


She could talk all day about the person they are missing, could laugh and cry and shout, and they’d believe her, but they wouldn’t _understand._ She tells herself it’s _not_ their _fault_ -  


But.  


But. They were there when their home became something it wasn’t meant to be. And they didn’t notice. They never seem to be on the same page- she remembers, what it was like to have all that she knows become false. She knew what it was like to know who she was- _what_ she was- who she knew herself to be- for that not to be the person she saw in the mirror.  


And she knows that all her friends went through that, all found themselves as something different, someone different. But their changes were so loud, blew up in front of their faces, wild and angry and animalistic, never hiding what it was or what it needed. Even Lydia, though she too found herself out of control, at least she knew _why_.  


They knew what happened to them.  


And if they didn’t see it coming, at least they saw it happen.  


But Kira couldn’t say the same. Because what was wrong inside of her was just that- _wrong,_ because she didn’t know about it, because it hid from _her_ \- this thing that was bright and wild and alive, so bright that everyone could see it.  


Everyone but her.  


Even in her final battle- what she thought would be her final battle, back when she thought she could escape staying in the desert- even then she couldn’t see, couldn’t see how little control she had, how she was a weapon in the hands of another creature. She thought she had succeeded, and she needed another’s eyes to see her for what she truly was.  


Her eyes were blind.  


Now hers are the only eyes that can see, and where she should feel pride, she just feels more alone.  


They don’t know what it was like- they who used to know better than she did- they had forgotten, _forgotten,_ what it was to turn around and find everything to be wrong, wrong in a way that tried to hide itself, tried to hide from her- _it tried to hide from her- he hid it from her-_  


Because they’ve forgotten the first time the enemy truly hid from them, hid in plain sight, hid inside someone they would never suspect-  


But that’s not quite true, she thinks, remembering the stories Lydia told her about Jackson, and Matt, thinking even of Theo, even of the nogitsune-  


But then, they have forgotten the one voicing the suspicion of these people.  


-  


Though she’s as ready as she can be, standing in the doorway of the Stilinski's house still has her sucking in a sharp breath. Because she had tried to steel herself to seeing a father without the memories of his child, without even the knowledge that he missing anyone, tried to prepare herself to see life going on without the child who couldn’t be there.  


But seeing a dead woman standing in the place of her son is a knife to the gut that Kira knows cannot completely be attributed to the image of Claudia Stilinski looking at her from very much alive eyes that look very much like her son’s.  


She can barely hear the Sheriff calling out to welcome her back to town in a bemused voice as she turns and rushes away.  


-  


Her sword, like her hands, can’t cut through the stitches the Rider’s left, but it cuts remarkably well into the trees of her backyard. She matches them, cut for cut for cut for cut, and Kira’s the only one to feel the sting, the only one left, the one that came back, the only one-  


She imagines her mother would tell her to cut her losses, to recognize a problem that’s too much for her to handle without backup, and there’s no real backup to be found.  


It’s all lost now.  


Her mother would tell her to leave, because that’s what her mother is good at. To leave and live and let suffer those who couldn’t do the same.  


Even her daughter.  


If only she had learned earlier to not leave her problems behind, leave them to fester in her absence. Maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess, in this town, this town that Kira can’t recognize, with people that can’t see now when she needs them to.  


With creatures that take and take and take what is _not theirs._  


And they’ll keep taking and Kira’s already missed out on so _much-_  


Her blade ends up lodged in a tree trunk, and they have taken so much from her, tricked so many others, the Ghost Riders weren’t even trickster spirits, but still they created a world of lies and though it was truly little consolation, Kira refused to be deceived again.  


-  


“So, the Sheriff asked if you were alright?” Scott asks, not commenting on the sword still stuck in the tree or her spot sitting under it. “You went to tell him… about Stiles?”  


She nods.  


“But you left?” he asks, taking a seat in front of her.  


Again she nods, and shuts her eyes, because she doesn’t want to see this right now.  


“We’ll figure it out,” Scott’s voice says. “You shouldn’t… shouldn’t have to be the one-”  


“But I have to be,” she says. “I’m the only one who remembers.”  


_Do you remember?_ she wants to ask. _Have you forgotten all those who left you?_  


Whether it’s that he doesn’t remember or doesn’t know, he reaches out to touch her hand, an offer of comfort, she knows, but she moves to stand, and turns to pull her sword out of its tree.  


“Kira,” he says softly.  


And she shuts her eyes again, against the thought of him saying her name, he who at one time knew her better than she knew herself. And he shouldn’t have known better, when she stood in front of him, when she was _burning_ and he didn’t _tell_ her. He knew her, and he knew her and he doesn’t know her now.  


He doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want him to.  


-  


The image of Claudia is a work of art. Kira had only see her in pictures, in brain scans and, now she knew, in Stiles’ eyes. A work of art, one that moves and breathes and seems to love and love. She’s nothing like the rough stitches the Riders left elsewhere, because in truth, she’s not their work. 

She's the work of the grief of a man who could not accept the loss of his child, even when he didn’t remember him, who refused to let go, of something intangible and invisible and stolen from him.  


A refusal so strong that he willingly deceives himself to just not feel that emptiness. And Kira’s hands shake, her nails dig into her palms and the memory of her own parents letting her go so easily _burns._ Unfair though it is, unfair when they’d sacrificed so much for her, in the end, she’d been alone and apart from life, in a reality that was not her own, and her parents hadn't.  


Unfair as it is, that pain is not a deception; to not let herself feel it would be the real lie. To give forgiveness she can’t yet give would be the deception. Trickster as she was meant to be, she’s done believing lies.  


-  


The more she looks, the more she sees the creature pretending to be Claudia for what it is. But she doesn’t strike, doesn’t say a word, she’ll play this game. This snake masquerading as a wife, circling around a prey that would defend it to the death, is intelligent, smart enough to find a safe haven and a source of grief to feed on. And she wonders if the Sheriff will ever be free of demons wearing the faces of his family.  


Kira sees white, because there has been enough ghouls feeding on the misery of Beacon Hills.  


-  


They’ll take the Beacon, she knows. They’ll take the town away to another world, though they have no right. They couldn’t be satisfied with making it their own with their tears and fractures and unwitting grief.  


She wonders if these threads would stay behind, when there’s no one there to fool, no one there to hold the land together for. She follows the threads, instead of going to her friends, because the threads, at least, she understands, are familiar with. 

Too familiar, but she doesn’t shy away from the reminder of what she’s done, the low burn saying that something was wrong. She doesn’t want to lie to herself and say she never did something similar. It had forced her to admit what she was capable of doing, what she was capable of feeling, and that reminded her that she wasn’t completely innocent, and so she wasn’t completely powerless.  


And she had needed to remember that in her first days in the desert.  


She left her own ugly marks on this town, down deep below the surface, down deep beneath the surface of her emotions, past the need to protect her friends, to ensure their safety, past the high of justice and of feeling for once that she was in control. 

Sending him away was a message she delivered, but one she agreed with, and though she’s not proud, part of the reason she could go through with it was that he was more of a trickster than she ever was, this copy of a supernatural being, and not even of a fox, was more of a trickster than her, and she took it personal where it really wasn’t, more personal than it already was. 

Personal because she couldn’t even _see_ it, though he could, and she could have seen if she only listened enough to _look,_ and if he saw her first, then she would she made sure he saw her last.  


In the moments after, she was forced to look at what she did, when she couldn’t tell herself that it was the fox or the Skin Walkers, but she herself who decided, because he was the first in a long line to take from her, and she wanted to make sure that he couldn’t take anymore, couldn’t hurt anymore, that he paid for what he did, paid to the hand of the first he stole from and the most deserving of revenge.  


That she wanted revenge at all was startling, but if she had to leave this world, then so did he, she had decided.  


He saw her, he too knew her better than she knew herself, at least on some level, and neither did he tell her. But then, he owed her nothing. Yet he was the first to help her, help her accept that her decisions would not always be pretty, because she was human. That her first answer did not have to be kindness where kindness would be taken advantage of, where it was dangerous, that she didn’t have to believe the best of people, and that she didn’t have to forgive where forgiveness was not sought and not earned. And after letting her life get away from her because she made such choices, believed blindly and paid for it, it was a lesson she had needed to learn, and he was the easiest to learn it with.  


And he served as a model of what cruelty and apathy could be, served to be the other extreme into which she didn’t want to fall.  


Yes, they left their marks on each other, and she follows these now, follows the traces she left behind, down below, down below to where things began to change, but she goes for all the ways things have stayed the same. Because magic protected her mind, protected her memory, magic and her refusal to be tricked again. And she knows that that same magic, the magic that damned him, also protected him, at least from the Ghost Riders’ theft.  


And she wonders if this fellow trickster wouldn’t have been fine even without her. But he remembers, Kira is certain, because she remembers.  


And it’s been so long since she’s had someone who truly _knows_ what this place was like, what her home was like. And he never cared for any of it, but he does know, and he knows how to play in this arena.  


He’s the backup she needs.  


She sent him away; it is fitting that she bring him back, that she is the first he sees as he claws his way from the rubble, from the hell she exiled him to, and though she didn’t see him the first time when she needed to, she’s ready now, blade poised and feet steady. She knows what the person she frees him to find tried to tell her, knows to be on guard, knows the danger of what she’s decided to do.  


She sees now, and she’s ready.


End file.
